THE HISTORY OF THE (AMERICAN) BODY

HISTSCI/MEDHIST 212

A survey of different conceptions of how the body as a site of sickness has been understood from Antiquity to contemporary medicine. Includes consideration of the origins and evolution of public health, the changing social role of healers, and the emergence of the modern "standardized" body in health and illness.

GEN&WS/HISTSCI/MEDHIST 531

Women as patients and as health professionals in America from the colonial period to the present.

MEDHIST 746

Examine ideas about race and ethnicity and their relationship to the history of "Western" medicine and science. Analyze the role of social, economic, cultural, and political developments in the shaping of scientific and medical notions of race and bodily difference. Study how skin color (and other elements of "racial identity") has influenced the experiences of patients and populations, physicians and nurses, and medical researchers. Discuss how conceptions of race have shaped both the health concerns and health outcomes of Americans in the past three hundred years, and the structure of medical institutions in the United States. Topics include the origins of racial classification, race and colonialism, the health and medical care of the enslaved, the use of enslaved people as research subjects, the history of racial disparities in medicine, structural racism of the medical establishment, race and reproduction, and the struggle for justice in health care during the past few decades.

HISTSCI/MEDHIST 919

Analyzes the scientific and social aspects of the development of modern medicine and public health in Europe and America.

ARTHIST 107

Considers the many fascinating ways in which cultures represented ideas of health, sex, disease, medicine, and death, focusing on the ways different art forms (painting, sculpture, architecture, prints, photography, textiles, decorative arts, hair, costume, music and dance, food) conveyed historically and culturally distinctive ideas about bodies. Linking the topics will be an attention to how notions of race, gender, and disability determine representations of the body. Enjoy an introduction to basic skills in visual interpretation that are widely applicable in today's world, while covering health and body-related topics chosen from the arts of Europe, China, Japan, Africa, the Islamic World, and the United States. Our objects of study range from ancient Greece and Rome to the present, with an emphasis on nineteenth- to twenty-first century art.